Currently there are nearly 500,000 spine lumbar and cervical fusion procedures are performed each year in the United States. One of the causes of back pain and disability results from the rupture or degeneration of one or more intervertebral discs in the spine. Surgical procedures are commonly performed to correct problems with displaced, damaged, or degenerated intervertebral discs due to trauma, disease, or aging. Generally, spinal fusion 20 procedures involve removing some or the all of the diseased or damaged disc, and inserting one or more intervertebral implants into the resulting disc space. Introducing the intervertebral implant from an anterior approach serves to restore the height between adjacent vertebrae (“disc height”), which reduces if not eliminates neural impingement commonly associated with a damaged or diseased disc.